HAMMERFALL Singer Wants To Tour With DISTURBED

Live-Metal.net recently conducted an interview with HAMMERFALL vocalist Joacim Cans. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Live-Metal.net: HAMMERFALL has an upcoming European tour in 2007. Who are you going to be touring with and could we possibly see HAMMERFALL in the U.S. sometime soon?

Cans: To answer the first question first, we are still negotiating with a couple of bands to support us on the European tour. This will be another headlining tour for us in Europe and we are trying to broaden the horizons a little bit now, not only bringing bands in the same genre. I believe three bands playing the same type of music for, let's say, three or four hours, sometimes that is an overkill. We'll see what happens. Pretty soon we will announce the support bands. As for the U.S., yes, we are discussing different options. I'm not really sure how we're gonna do it the next time, if we're gonna do a smaller club tour, a headline tour again or if we're gonna try and support a bigger band. I think now we've done three tours in the U.S. and maybe it is time to try and find a bigger band to support, a band like DISTURBED, for instance, which I think would make sense because they are melodic and we are also melodic, but still we are more towards heavy metal and they are more modern. It's hard to find a heavy metal band to support. That is impossible.

Live-Metal.net: What have been some of your most memorable experiences in HAMMERFALL?

Cans: Well, first of all, one of the biggest things is still when we got the record deal in the first place. This was in 1996 at a time when heavy metal was probably the most uncool thing you could do, the most uncool music you could play. That is really, really memorable. The first world tour, the same thing, in 1998. We were able to do South America for the first time. We toured North America with DEATH. It felt weird at first to tour with a death metal band, but it turned out to be a fantastic tour and I got to know Chuck Schuldiner, which was really cool because he passed away two years later. It seems like with every album we have been able to raise the status of the band. Now, just before we recorded this album, we did two videos, one for the Swedish Olympic curling team for the Winter Olympics, then we did a song and a video with some athletes in Sweden for the European Athletics Championships. So we are living a dream, more or less. The last 10 years, I remember everything that happened. There are so many small things that have happened, but they are so important to me. If I would give you everything, we would probably have to put out a magazine only with this.

Live-Metal.net: What do you think makes Sweden in particular the heavy metal breeding ground that it's been?

Cans: Good question. I think first of all, growing up in Sweden as a musician or as an artist in general, no matter if you're into sports or into music, you get a lot of support from the government, I would say. You get to go to music class in school. You can pick your instrument and you don't really pay that much money to do it. When you put your band together, they support you with rent money. So there's always a lot of support going on. I think we have a strong musical tradition in Sweden and it's really hard to point out exactly why it's been like this. Maybe because of the winter, the darkness, people get depressed and they want to create something. And in these depressions, good music and good things come out eventually.

Read the entire interview at Live-Metal.net.